Overdue
by jansonpls
Summary: Does everyone join the Rebellion first chance they get? And why do the others end up joining?


**Title:** Overdue   
**Author:** djcati   
**Fandom:** Star Wars post-RotJ   
**Characters:** OC   
**Rating:** G   
**Notes:** Title is partly from the Muse song of the same name (which _kinda_ would fit), and partly from the fact that this was mostly written in early November... Blame **SpeldoriontheBlended** for this actually being edited and posted, and not left to rot on my hard drive until the end of time... ;   
**Words:** 2315 

_come let be the truth be shared   
no one ever dared   
to break these endless lies_

** muse - "sunburn" **

- 

I grew up on Coruscant - in the rich, upper levels, mind you, not the slums of the lower levels. My family were rich, noble, perfectly despisable aristocrats. They weren't Imperials, per se, but nor were they public supporters of the Rebel Alliance. I grew up in a household that was happy to let anyone win the war - so long as it would benefit _them_. 

When the Death Star was blown up at Yavin. . . that was the first time the war was _real_ to me. Up to then, I'd been happy to let it all pass by me - my only goals were to go to school, get good grades, make my family proud of me. There were traditions to be upheld; traditions didn't involve caring about a war. 

I was walking home from a friend's apartment, out on the walkways between my building and his. I was on my own, but as with anywhere on Coruscant - Imperial Center, as I knew it at the time - I wasn't _alone_. Thousands of people - all humans, that high up - crammed into the streets, trying to mind their own business. _Everyone_ minded their own business on Coruscant back then. Meeting someone's eye out on the street was dangerous; talking to them was suicide. 

Then the big holoscreens on the sides of the surrounding buildings lit up. Before, they had been playing continuous advertisements, urging us to buy a new and improved protein bar, to go and see Garik Loran's latest holo, to continue to pledge our support to the Emperor. . . Now, they displayed a scene that I had never witnessed firsthand - the deep black of space, the sparkling of stars. . . 

And a large, dark, awe-inspiring sphere of a space station. A shape I knew well from my friends' excited chattering in school, from pictures they had accessed on the Holonet. . . This was the Death Star. 

I hardly noticed that the crowds had quietened, that they had drawn to a halt, staring up at the screens. All I knew was that _I_ had stopped, that _I_ was staring up at the screens: frozen to the spot and holding my breath in anticipation. Why was this being shown? Why. . . why were there flies buzzing around the picture? Little flitnats, flashing white and red and green. Larger insects clamouring around them, strangely-shaped insects, triangles and rectangles, geometrically-shaped. . . insects. . . 

Starships. I gasped. Starships and starfighters, and as the image zoomed in quickly, I recognised the familiar shapes, felt a surge of pride at the TIE fighters, a strange longing for the X-wings, the Y-wings - more pictures my friends had shown me. 

The image zoomed out again, and once more the space station could be seen, the whole shape filling most of the holoscreen. I knew this was the Empire's creation, knew that my school teachers were right, absolutely undeniably _right_ when they said that anything and everything the Emperor made was good. . . but I couldn't help the _fear_ I felt when I looked upon the Death Star, couldn't help my silent support for the Rebel fighters firing at the TIEs. That was all right. Nobody would know, nobody would find out. 

An explosion. A sharp, blinding, orange and white explosion, soundless in the vacuum of space, breathtaking on the holocam. A moment passed before I understood what had happened. 

_The Death Star had been blown up._

The Death Star had been blown up! 

I couldn't help myself: I cheered, loudly, excitedly, _happy_ at the scene I had just witnessed. The crowds around me were rejoicing, thousands of people, almost all of them caught up in the moment, in the exciting, jubilant _hope_ that had filled everyone. Hope? Or just adrenalin? 

A symbol of the Empire - a frightening, terrible bringer of destruction - and it was gone. Part of me, the part that whispered conspiratorially with my friends and held dreams of attending the Academy, of becoming an ace TIE pilot, a star stormtrooper commando, a naval officer - that part cried out for the loss of the space station, the promise of protection against all the Empire's enemies. 

The rest of me cheered with the crowd. _The Death Star had been blown up!_

Static, white noise, then blank screens. Fear. Panic. 

Still excited, fuelled by the adrenaline rush, I ran. I pushed my way through the crowd, shoving the strangers aside carelessly, escaping the mob and heading home as fast as I could. My rucksack crashed against my side painfully; I swung the other strap over my left shoulder and kept running. Shouts came from behind me, indignant yelling and crackling blaster shots, but they were aimed at the crowd, not me, so I ignored them. 

Running, running, I made it, stumbling into the turbolift of my apartment block and batting at the correct button. The rush over, my energy spent, I collapsed against the side wall of the 'lift. I was exhausted now, and knew I would sleep the minute I reached my bed, but I was still _excited_. 

I had just witnessed, I knew, the beginning of the end for the Empire. And my heart still cheered, I still grinned, realisation dawning on me: I _did_ care about this war after all - and my support lay with the Rebels. 

The battle of Yavin _did_ turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Empire, which I am immensely glad of. But was it the beginning of the end for me, too? Witnessing the Death Star explosion, deciding to be a Rebel. . . It was this that made me play a more active role in the New Republic than I otherwise would have, but did it whisper promises of my destruction too? Or was that my own doing? No. . . no. 

As the war dragged on, I almost forgot my promise to myself. Not fully - it was always there, in the back of my mind, constantly reminding me of its existence - but it was never very _important_. Not like it had seemed at the time. It was always overshadowed by schoolwork, by _this_ party, by _that_ family occasion. . . The war for freedom in the galaxy just wasn't as important as an aristocratic twelve-year-old's busy social and academic life. 

By the time the second Death Star was destroyed, I was almost sixteen years old, studying for exams and figuring out how to tell my parents I no longer wanted to attend the Imperial Academy. It was late evening on Coruscant, or so the chronometer told me - darkness never truly came to the city planet. I sat at my terminal, using a relay chat program to talk to a school friend, when he sent me the link. It led me to a live broadcast, an uplink from an Alliance holocam - footage from minutes earlier, he told me. Right from the battle. 

I watched the scene unfold in awe, breathtaking as it was. The flitnat starfighters, specks of debris, green and red flashes - and another explosion. The explosion, the bright orange and white, the fire fuelled by the space station's atmosphere venting, dying out as soon as it had started. . . the _explosion_. . . It brought everything back in a rush, adrenaline pumping through me as it did four years previously, and I _knew_ I had to be a part of it. I knew I had to join the Rebel Alliance. 

"The Emperor's dead," my friend told me. "He was on it. And Vader, too." 

"No. . ." I couldn't believe it. Was it true? Was the Emperor really dead? Did that mean. . . could that mean. . . the Empire was finished? "Are you serious?" 

"As a thermal detonator." A few seconds passed, then another message scrolled across my screen. "Look out your viewport." 

I did. It was chaos - but _great_ chaos. Cheers, dancing, people _actually hugging each other_ out on the streets of Coruscant - and the upper levels, too! Just like before, the screens on all the buildings I could see were displaying the battle scene, the same holocam view I'd been watching just a few moments earlier. It was accompanied by a scrolling message - squinting, I could read: "Death to the Emperor - long live the Alliance!" 

"Is that you?" I asked him excitedly, my fingers fumbling over the keyboard. 

"Not me - Blondie." A senior at school a few years previously, Blondie hated his nickname, which was why it had stuck so well among the students. I didn't even remember his real name - Donn? If I recalled correctly, he had left and become a systems specialist for some small company - we all knew him as an expert slicer, though. It didn't surprise me that he'd done this - just that he'd been willing to risk it. He must have supported the Alliance more than I thought. 

"Is he still logged on?" 

"Nope, gone to join in. There are parties all over the planet. He said we should all celebrate, so I'm out of here. Later." And then he was gone. 

I wanted to go. Wanted desperately to join in the parties, escape the cold evening atmosphere at home and be a part of something bright, warm, happy, a celebration. Strangers who'd shoot you as soon as look at you out on the streets, united by a long-feared hope, a realised dream. . . The Alliance had won against the Empire! I wanted to _go_. 

But I didn't. My parents would find out, would chastise me for risking the family name, would be _disappointed_. . . I thought of myself as an adult, as a man, free to make his own choices, free to be a Rebel, to do what I wanted. . . But really, I was still just a kid. I still cared what my parents thought of me, still craved their acceptance even as I rejected it, the immature teenager that I was. 

I wasn't ready to risk everything and join the Alliance - because I knew, if I went out amongst the celebrators that night, that I would end up doing so. No: I still clung to my childhood, my noble upbringing, the safe, secure knowledge that I would go to the Academy, rise to rank in the military, marry a nice girl, a family friend of my parents, and _be a gentleman._ Gentlemen didn't join the Rebel Alliance. 

The party went on without me. It was all over the Holonet for days - wild riots everywhere over Coruscant, other planets, uprisings, terrorist attacks, chaos. I watched the reports in awe, longing to be a part of the chaos, thrilled that I knew people who _were_. 

I didn't hear from my friend for a while, and as the days turned to a week, two weeks, my certainty grew - he had joined the Alliance! The New Republic, as they called themselves now. He had joined them, gone to be a starfighter pilot, a hero! Oh, how I envied him, how I wished I could follow. 

The school holidays drew to a close; the exam period started. Still there was no sign of him. He _had_ joined the Rebel Alliance! 

That was when my life was knocked out from under me; when everything from my childhood was banished. 

It was a simple announcement - a New Republic official was publishing a list of all those killed in the riots after the destruction of the second Death Star. The fact that such a list existed was enough to rattle me. What did they mean, people had died? In the _celebrations_? How? Why? 

Stormtroopers, of course. Imperial loyalists, other military officials on-planet at the time. 

My friend hadn't run off to be a starfighter pilot. He'd hardly made it a mile from his apartment block. Lost and confused in the chaos, he'd been shot dead by a stormtrooper. 

The report told me this, plain black and white on my Holonet terminal screen. His name, time and location of death, his age. _Sixteen years old._ Sixteen years old, and shot dead for supporting the Alliance. That's what the Imperials were, that's what they _did_. That was my childhood, and I knew it was over. 

I had to go. On the afternoon of my last exam, I ran all the way back to my empty apartment. I'd already transferred all my savings - and a fair amount of my parents' - into a new account, on Duro. I had cash, too, enough for passage off-world, I hoped - enough to get me to the Alliance. 

Indeed it was. A Sullustan pilot agreed to take me to a world more sympathetic to the Rebels, for only half the cash amount I had on me. In retrospect, that was probably the best thing that could have happened. I was leaving my school, my parents, my home, my _life_ behind on Coruscant. . . Time to leave behind the more ingrained prejudices, too, the Imperial habits drilled into me from an early age. I was going to be a Rebel, wasn't I? That didn't just mean going against the Empire, but what the Empire _stood for_. 

Of course, at the time, I was appalled. Allowing myself to fly with - and pay - an _alien_? Unthinkable. 

A lot of things changed for me when I left Coruscant, not just my prejudice against aliens. I had thought, leaving home, that it was the end of my life as I knew it. And it was - but also the start of another one. A bigger, better life. . . Chaotic, hard, ill-paid - but it _felt_ right. 

I only wish, now, that I had _always_ done the things that felt right. . . 


End file.
